An integrated circuit may be manufactured at one location (i.e., a wafer fabrication plant) but packaged at another location (i.e., a test and assembly plant). Oftentimes, different water fabrication plants manufacture integrated circuits using different process technologies. In such instances, a partially-formed integrated circuit or a partially-formed integrated circuit package is sent to one semiconductor manufacturing plant so that the partially-formed devices may be further processed.
However, integrated circuit dies transferred from one plant to another are more prone to being damaged due to increased shipping and handling procedures involved in packing and unpacking the integrated circuits. For example, integrated circuits are often mishandled when a test operator manually extracts an integrated circuit from a shipping box. In other instances, integrated circuits are damaged due to electrostatic discharge (ESD) events while being transported in a shipping container.
Many precautionary steps such as proper training and automated tools have been developed to prevent damage to the integrated circuits when being transferred between manufacturing facilities. Current state of the art procedures, however, still result in more than 30% of the integrated circuits being damaged due to improper handling.
It is within this context that the embodiments described herein arise.